IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Confirmed yet again: 2010 hottest year on record so far; Fossil fuel death toll still rising ... PLUS: The three-month mark of the BP Oil Disaster in the Gulf, and all the oily mess that goes with it ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

A 45-year-old parolee, described by his mother as angry at left-wing politicians, opened fire on California Highway Patrol officers on an Oakland freeway early Sunday and was hit by return fire while wearing body armor, authorities said.

Byron Williams of Groveland (Tuolumne County) was taken to the emergency room at Highland Hospital, where he was in stable condition.
...
Williams watched the news on television and was upset by "the way Congress was railroading through all these left-wing agenda items," his mother said.

Golly, I wonder what channel Williams watched for his "news on television".

Police say a California man arrested after a freeway shootout with authorities was planning to attack people at the American Civil Liberties Union and another nonprofit group.

Oakland police Officer Jeff Thomason says Byron Williams was upset with the ACLU and Tides Foundation for their political views.
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He was arraigned Tuesday on four counts of attempted murder, plus weapons enhancements. He was released from the hospital earlier in the day after being treated for injuries from the shootout.

If you didn't already know that the latest Fox "News" fake "outrage" about the jackass from the New Black Panther Party who was caught on video standing outside a Philadelphia polling place with a nightstick in 2008 was another predictably trumped-up Rightwing scam story, Jamison Foser will help you understand why that is.

But as with the phony ACORN "Pimp" Hoax, the most unsettling part of this latest scam is not just that Fox is promoting a phony story, round-the-clock, to rile up and scare their gullible viewers. That's what they do. We all know that by now. Or should. What's disturbing is that so-called Ombudsmen at major, theoretically non-wingnut "liberal media" outlets have yet to figure any of that out.

This time around, it's Washington Post's Ombudsman Andrew Alexander who takes the bait --- hook, line, nightstick, and phony whistleblower --- in support of his paper's coverage of what they shamefully headlined as a "political bombshell." Hoax Accomplished. Again.

Media Matters' Simon Maloy predicted this story would play out in exactly this way back on July 2nd [emphasis ours]:

The Tea Party Express has been expelled from the National Tea Party Federation, an umbrella group of Tea Parties, in a disturbing incident of Tea Party on Tea Party non-violence.

The weekend expulsion came in response to a so-called satirical letter written to Abraham Lincoln by Tea Party Express spokesman and Rightwing talk show host, Mark Williams.

The letter in question begins: "Dear Mr. Lincoln, We Coloreds have taken a vote and decided that we don't cotton to that whole emancipation thing. Freedom means having to work for real, think for ourselves, and take consequences along with the rewards. That is just far too much to ask of us Colored People and we demand that it stop!"

Williams' high-larious "parody letter" (as he later called it when he took it off his site) was, itself, in response to the NAACP's recent resolution, condemning "racist elements" within the Tea Party. Geez, what racist elements?!...

It's been explained to me that one of the reasons we have such a difficult time selling ads on this blog --- or receiving donations (Serious hint there, people! Please? Thanks!) --- is that I'm reliably unreliable when it comes to supporting any particular political party.

This, of course, makes me toxic to most of the partisans out there, in what has become an insanely partisan world. (It also makes it very difficult to pay the rent, so see shameless plea above.)

In any case, I'm now I'm more toxic than ever, as the following short animated video proves!

The video below has just been released by the Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families coalition, and I was honored to give voice to all of the different male cartoon characters you'll see. Yes, they're all actually me! Toxic, but hopefully amusing. Just like this blog. Enjoy and spread the word!...

(And I was serious about the terrible lack of donations. Could really use the support! And you know I hates askin'! If you can help, I promise much more relentless toxicity from this blog in the foreseeable future!)

Of course, the ad was run on television before it was pulled. The fact-checking was not done in advance, so lies such as health insurance reform being "a government takeover of healthcare" were allowed to be aired as if they were legitimate claims.

Naturally, the campaign of Sestak's Republican opponent, Pat Toomey, backed up the Chamber's ads, even as they are not supposed to be coordinating with such groups, according to the law. But what do quaint old notions like "the rule of law" really mean anymore in these United States anyway?

What is underscored again here, is that corporate lobbyists and criminals like those at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are now free to wield millions --- even billions --- of dollars for or against candidates they don't like, or who may not meet with their corporate approval for any reason.

That's what the U.S. Supreme Court has recently deemed "free speech". And you, dear private citizen of the United States of America, can do nothing about it --- unless you happen to have a few hundred million extra dollars sitting around the house and want to exercise your "free speech" in producing and airing TV commercials in opposition. Good luck with that.

[Please see, and support, VelvetRevolution.us' StopTheChamber.com campaign to help push back against the anti-American, anti-citizen Goliath that is the U.S. Chamber. Disclosure: The BRAD BLOG is a co-founder of VR.]

* * *

UPDATE 4:04pm: Looks like the Rightwing corporate bosses at Sinclair may have come down on the local stations. AP is now reporting the Chamber says the ads are being restored:

Two Pittsburgh-area TV stations are reversing a decision to pull a commercial attacking Democratic policies and the voting record of U.S. Senate candidate Joe Sestak.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce said Friday that the stations are restoring the ad that the business advocacy group sponsored.

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: 2010 shaping up as hottest year on record; BP Oil Disaster stop-and-go; MI from 'Rust Belt' to 'Green Belt'; New revelations in WV coal mine disaster; PLUS: It's ALIVE! (For now.) Climate and Clean Energy Legislation is back in the U.S. Senate! ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!...

The mystery surrounding a long-questioned and allegedly "fixed" non-partisan 2006 Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) bond election in Pima County, AZ continues to deepen as troubling new details have now emerged. The resolution in this matter --- should it ever come --- could spell trouble for supporters of paper-based optical-scan electronic voting systems, since indications are that if the election was rigged, it was done with insiders via the electronic central tabulating computers.

Late last week another new twist was discovered in the years-long election fraud investigation by Democratic and Libertarian Election Integrity advocates in Tucson. The revelations come to light in what was thought by many to have been a settled election, at last, following a long-sought hand-count of paper ballots carried out last year by the office of AZ's Democratic Attorney General Terry Goddard. The AG had announced in April of last year that his criminal investigation hand-count had "affirmed" the original results of the election were correct.

As it turns out, The BRAD BLOG, which has been covering this bizarre matter for years, plays a small role in this latest development, as a promise that Goddard's office made to us last year concerning the "poll tapes" --- remarks which he was asked about during a press conference at the end of the hand count [see the remarks on video below] --- may have now boomeranged on him.

Given that Goddard is now the likely Democratic nominee to face Republican Gov. Jan Brewer in this fall's Gubernatorial race, this revelation couldn't have come at a much worse time for him.

After many years of litigation, Election Integrity advocates have now finally been allowed to review the long sought-after poll tapes in question. What they've discovered is disturbing and, so far, without legitimate explanation.

Out of 368 precincts, 112 poll tapes are completely missing. Moreover, 102 of the "yellow sheets" --- certified precinct reports, signed by poll workers, detailing corresponding summary information, such as numbers of ballots received, cast and spoiled, as helpful for important auditing functions at the precinct level --- are missing as well.

Furthermore, of the poll tape records that are not missing, 50 of them do not match the results as recorded in the final canvas of the election, according to the Election Integrity advocates who have compared them to the original electronic database numbers...

Yesterday The BRAD BLOG covered the invasion of privacy lawsuit filed by former San Diego ACORN worker Juan Carlos Vera against Rightwing activists and dirty tricksters James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles after they'd video-taped him secretly, in violation of California law.

As noted in today's Green News Report, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar has ordered a new moratorium on exploratory deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere off the continental shelf of the U.S.. The new suspension may make prior court battles over the previous moratorium moot, even as questions linger concerning apparent conflicts-of-interest by the judge who originally heard the case.

Stating that he was basing his decision on "an extensive record of existing and new information indicating that allowing new deepwater drilling to commence would pose a threat of serious, irreparable, or immediate harm or damage to the marine, coastal, and human environment," Salazar sent a memo yesterday to Michael R. Bromwich, the Director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEM), directing him to issue new suspensions of deepwater drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS). The new suspensions, presuming they withstand another inevitable court challenge from the oil industry, will run through November 30 and apply to both the Pacific and Gulf Coast regions.

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Has BP finally put a lid on it?; Drilling moratorium Round Two; Haiti's forgotten disaster, six months later ... PLUS: Climate scientists exonerated again, AGAIN (again) ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Zombie lies concocted by climate deniers likely to stick around despite corrections; Reports from four fronts in the War on Warming; Did BP play a role in terrorist's release, to get drilling rights in Libya?; Death toll rises after levees fail in China; PA quarantines cattle contaminated with fracking fluid; Obama admin announces Alaska drilling lease sale; EPA uses industry studies to test safety of weedkiller ...PLUS: Doomsday: Could BP Spill Kill All Life on Earth?...

While being interviewed by Ralph Nader, Napolitano says what Bush and Cheney did while in office was "blatantly unconstitutional, and in some cases criminal."

When asked by Nader what the consequences should be, the judge says, in no uncertain terms: "They should have been indicted! They absolutely should have been indicted! For torturing, for spying, for arresting without warrant."

Wow. Guess his contract on Fox must be up. If it wasn't, we suspect it is now. The text transcript and video --- with Napolitano explaining that the "evidence...is overwhelming" that Bush and Cheney "participated in criminal conspiracies to violate the federal law and the guaranteed civil liberties of hundreds, maybe thousands of human beings --- follows below. Take a look...

Rightwing dirty-trickster and convicted federal criminal James O'Keefe and his accomplice Hannah Giles are being sued for invasion of privacy by a San Diego ACORN worker.

Juan Carlos Vera was fired by the 4-decade old anti-poverty, pro-democracy community organization after deceptively edited and secretly recorded video tapes of a meeting Vera had with O'Keefe and Giles were released by the pair and published on Republican propagandist Andrew Breitbart's websites. The tapes were then widely aired on Fox "News", as well as non-Rightwing media outlets.

Vera is suing for at least $75,000 in accordance with California's Invasion of Privacy Act which, according to the short, four-page complaint [PDF] filed at week's end in U.S. District Court, "prohibits the recording of confidential communications without the consent of all participants where there is an objectively reasonable expectation that the conversation is not being overheard or recorded."

In April of this year, CA Attorney General Jerry Brown completed a five-month probe into O'Keefe/Giles/Breitbart's secretly-taped ACORN videos and found "no criminality" by any of the ACORN workers seen on what he described as "severely edited" tapes.

He did, however, find that O'Keefe and Giles themselves were likely to have violated California law, and could see private litigation brought against them...